Do You Need A Lucky Break?

There’s a natural tendency amongst some to assume that when they see someone successful, it’s because they’ve been lucky in some way – they had wealthy parents or they inherited or won a sizeable sum of money.   And, for some people this may be true, but how many times have we heard of children of wealthy parents going off the rails or squandering the family fortune, or people who win millions on the lottery ending up only a few short years later, back where they started?  Considered from this angle, then it doesn’t look quite so lucky!

But as we know, luck isn’t actually luck at all, and as Seneca tells us…

“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity”. 

Consider the recent London Olympics.  How much could lucky-to-have ‘natural talent’ have contributed to the gold medals received by the winning athletes?   Well there’s no doubt that these athletes are talented, but a much larger part of their success was due to the relentless work they put in in the years leading up to the Olympics.

Malcolm Gladwell, author of  Outliers: The Story of Success believes that we need to put in around 10,000 hours of practice in our chosen field to reach the highest levels of success.   That’s a lot of time.  To put this into context, we would need to practice for at least 4 hours a day, seven days a week for eight years to achieve the mastery that Gladwell is referring to!  For most of us that seems completely out of the question, and in reality, without the support of our families, it’s unlikely that we could commit to that level of input at an early age.

But other things are also required, probably at an early age, to achieve this kind of mastery.  Along with the ability to persist in the face of obstacles and temporary failure, these athletes needed to have a clear vision of what they wanted to achieve.  After all, it’s pointless racing towards something that isn’t defined.  How would we know that we had succeeded?  Would we just keep going?

Perhaps knowing what our ‘passion’ is and then taking active steps to achieve it is the lucky part of the equation.  It’s sometimes difficult to know what will make us happy and this therefore creates uncertainty and maybe unwillingness to pursue our ‘dream’.

‘I always knew I wanted to be a…<fill the gap>’ is something we hear occasionally.

But I’m often surprised that, despite knowing what we want, so many of us either delay or fail altogether to intentionally move in the direction of our most desired outcome, and in its place we become inert, allowing the herd to carry us along instead.  Part of this, of course, is our basic human need to fit in, to feel that we ‘belong’.  It can be counterintuitive in these circumstances to pursue our dreams since this is likely to be different to the things everyone else (in our social circle) is doing, and in taking action on our goals, we will inevitably move outside the herd.

Staying with the analogy of the herd, stepping away is scary and potentially dangerous too.  With a reduced, or even worse, no, support mechanism, any failures will be felt acutely.  Furthermore, we will have nobody to blame but ourselves and only ourselves to rely upon when trying to make a recovery.  But it’s not all bad news.  When we move beyond our current circumstances and start making inroads into our desires, we will surely meet new people who will share our new found interest.  These people will help and encourage us and if we allow ourselves to become part of this new herd, we will find the support we need.

So if you’ve started on your journey to your success, don’t be afraid to push outside the boundaries set by your herd.  I can assure you that this will feel uncomfortable, if not downright awful when you realise that you no longer quite fit, or you no longer comfortably belong.  But this is part of growing, and in the process of growing you will become a person who fits within a new herd, with a new and different outlook which complements your new life.

The transition may take a while, but it’s worth bearing with your evolution so that you may become a fuller version of yourself.  More you, more authentic.  And as for the requirement to put your 10,000 hours in to achieve mastery, well why not?  It might take a little longer than eight years, but in my opinion, as long as we’re making progress, the time it takes is irrelevant as somewhere during that preparation, your lucky break is going to turn up!

I hope you’ve enjoyed my latest post.  As always I look forward to reading your comments.  Why not let us know when you have experienced a ‘lucky break’ due to preparation?  Please share your experiences of this important topic!

 

Photo: Mike Baird